It Can't Rain All The Time
by Magdalync
Summary: Sometimes in life, a little rain must fall. 2 part hurt/comfort piece about friendship, love and acceptance. Babe.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **A little sad. This 2 part piece deals with a sensitive topic and touches on a somewhat controversial subject matter. This is a Babe piece. Joe is in part 1 and he is a good guy. Part 2 will be Steph and Ranger. I wrote this a while ago as a response to Adalind's challenge: It can't rain all the time. Thoughts and views of the characters in this piece are just one version of how these characters might think or react in this situation and not intended to be considered 'canon'.

**Special thanks** to Alfonsina.d for her beta skills, unending support and friendship, and a shout out to Cinbru and Kymme.*snort* I'm sensing a theme here…

**It Can't Rain All the Time**

Joe's POV

Tank let me in to the penthouse apartment. We had exchanged only cursory nods before he led me to the elevator and stoically stood beside me as he escorted me to the seventh floor. He key fobbed the door open for me and I stepped inside. I took in the stark lines of the place my Cupcake had called home for the last six months. I turned to thank Tank for calling me but he had left silently, closing the door behind him.

I had only been up here once before. I haven't returned since she came to live with him. I supposed I had moved on but I needed no reminders of the life she chose to lead without me.

Tank had called an hour ago to let me know his concerns. Stephanie had not shown up for her shift this morning and he had called to make sure she was okay. She told him that she was fine, only sick. But he sensed something was 'off'. He then offered to send Bobby. According to Tank, she seemed to panic. He said she sounded like she had been crying and she told him she just wanted to be alone.

Ranger had been 'in the wind' for three months.

I made my way down the hall and stepped into his bedroom. Their bedroom. I made a point of not looking at the massive bed with its sheets in disarray and the comforter kicked to the floor. It didn't matter that I knew that Manoso hadn't slept in this bed with her for months. I couldn't look.

I approached the bathroom door and could hear her softly keening and from the direction of the sound, she was sitting on the floor with her back to the door.

I cleared my throat and said, "Cupcake? It's me, honey. Are you okay?"

Suddenly she was quiet. Too quiet.

"Go away."

"Sweetheart, you know I'm not going to leave. Everybody is worried about you. Tell me what's wrong."

Nothing but silence from the other side of the door.

I turned around and ran my hands through my hair in frustration. It was when I turned around that I saw it. Blood. A brownish-red stain the size of a dinner plate near the center of the bed. I felt my heart go in my throat.

I've had girlfriends. Hell, I had _this_ girlfriend. I spent enough time with a woman in my life to know that this type of stain was not a result of getting a period in the middle of the night.

I spun around and tried the knob. It was locked. "Cupcake, you have to go to the doctor."

"No."

"Cupcake."

"I said no!"

I heard her scoot away from the door and the sound of crinkling plastic and then quiet again.

"Stephanie…maybe it's not too late. Maybe if you let me take you to the doctor-"

In a bleak voice she said, "It's too late."

"How can you know?"

"Fuck, Joe! God. There's more than just blood, okay? I've talked to the doctor on the phone. Twice. There's nothing they can do," she said as her voice broke.

I slid down the door onto my ass. I felt a jolt as she leaned back heavily against the other side. I put my hand against the door where I imagined her head lay, offering her the comfort I knew she didn't want.

"Cupcake, please let me in?"

Softly, she said, "No."

I swallowed hard. "How far along were you?"

I heard her blow her nose and sniffle a few times. "Fourteen weeks."

"Did he know?"

She choked out, "No."

God, this was hard. "Honey, he'd want to know. He'd want to be here with you."

She let out a mirthless laugh. "No. He didn't want this."

"Cupcake, I'm sure-"

"No, Joe, _I'm sure_. He didn't want another child." She garbled, "I didn't want a child! I guess I got my wish."

I'd heard enough. I stood up on shaky legs and dug my pocket knife out of my pocket. I didn't have anything on it small enough to pick the lock so I used a medium blade to start taking apart the doorknob.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm coming in."

"No! You can't see this! Please don't," she sobbed.

I heard the other half of the knob clatter on the tiles in the bathroom. "Baby, move away from the door."

She was still for a moment and then I saw a flash of her curls through the hole the knob left as she slid to the side of the door.

I swung the door open. There was a plastic garbage bag on the floor lying open. I could see several rolled up pads in there and pink plastic wrappers. I swung my head to the right and saw Stephanie clad only in a towel. Her hand was between her legs and I glanced down and saw that she was holding a pad there. She wouldn't look up and meet my eyes.

I squatted down in front of her and grazed my knuckles down her pale cheek. A new tear trickled down to follow the path my hand had made.

"Steph."

She didn't look up. "Can you get me a shirt or something? And some panties?"

I stood and made my way to the bedroom. After opening a few drawers, I found one of Ranger's black t-shirts and a pair of utilitarian panties. When I came back into the bathroom, she was standing, clutching her towel and her thighs were clamped together. I laid the items on the counter and stepped back out to give her some privacy.

I made quick work of stripping the sheets and the mattress pad. When I saw that the blood had penetrated through to the mattress, I flipped the whole thing over. I wadded up the sheets and mattress pad and tucked them under other dirty laundry in the hamper in the dressing room. I heaved a sigh and sat on the floor leaning my back against the bed.

The bathroom door opened and Steph stepped out, unsure. She looked like a miserable child all but swallowed up by Manoso's shirt. I held my arms up and said, "Come here."

She sniffed and lowered herself into my lap, curling up with her nose in my neck. I rubbed soothing circles on her back. "You're going to be okay."

She whispered into my neck, "I'm not. It's all my fault."

I laid a kiss on the top of her head and said, "What makes you say that?"

"I didn't want to be pregnant."

Making sure to keep my voice completely lacking of any judgment, I said, "Did you have an abortion?"

She wiped her face and shook her head. "I thought I could. I thought about it. Ranger wouldn't want a baby. I didn't want a baby. But in the end, I just couldn't."

I kept rubbing circles on her back and willed her to continue.

"I can't contact Ranger when he's on a mission, so I decided I would just wait until he got home to tell him…show him. And if he didn't want us in his life…"

"He would."

She shook her head.

"Steph, he would."

She finally looked up at me, her face bleak and her eyes rimmed in red. "But in the beginning, I wished the baby away." She wiped at her face again and sobbed, "I wished my baby away!"

I held her as she cried, murmuring, "No you didn't. You didn't. It's okay. It's not your fault."

Once she had calmed again, I pulled her face up and forced her to look in my eyes. "Listen to me. This is not your fault. You wanted that baby. Maybe you didn't know it at first, but you wanted that baby. Manoso would have wanted that baby."

"I don't-"

"I do. You need to be honest with him when he gets back. You need to tell him everything you told me."

She interrupted, "But the way his life is-"

"He loves you. He wants what you want. He will adapt, adjust."

"I just screw everything up."

"That's ridiculous."

"Joe, how can you say that? I screwed up your life for three years. I've screwed up his life. He's had to make all of these concessions for me."

"Cupcake, you didn't screw up my life. I wouldn't trade what we shared for anything. You just let me go. One day, I'm going to meet the person I'm meant to be with, and I wouldn't have met her if you hadn't let me go.

"And Manoso wouldn't make any changes in his life unless he wanted to. He loves you. How can you doubt that?"

She shrugged. "Cupcake, I know you're sad right now. You'll probably always be sad when you think of this. But you're life will get better again. It will."

"How can you know?"

"It can't rain all the time."

~End Part 1

**A/N: **Stay tuned. Ranger is in part two. If you haven't checked out my profile page recently, please check it out now… after you review. *wink* I have updated, and it now has a link for those of you who were wondering about the progress of my book. There's also news regarding Lester and Xander…they won't leave me alone!


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Contains controversial topic matter. Character's opinions and thoughts are simply what I think my version of the characters might think and feel and are in no way meant to imply that these thoughts and views are right or wrong.

* * *

**It Can't Rain All the Time, Part II**

Six days later, Ranger's POV

I toed off my boots in the foyer as soon as the door closed behind me. I was exhausted. I had spent the last two days debriefing and had flown straight home in the middle of the night. I couldn't wait to hold her in my arms again. God, I missed her. I had missed her in the past when I had gone on missions, but I had only allowed myself fleeting thoughts of her. She hadn't been mine to miss so I only allowed myself the briefest moments to remember her smile, her laugh, and when I was weak, her kiss.

This is the first time I've gone on a mission and had left a lover behind. Yes, I had gone on a mission almost immediately after I had married Rachel. But that was different. Rachel was a responsibility; she was the mother of my future child. I had never considered her my lover. Stephanie is my choice, the wife of my heart.

After tossing my keys in the dish, I padded to the kitchen and downed a bottle of water. Then I made my way down the darkened hall into the bedroom. Our bedroom.

I swear I felt my heart expand when I saw her lying in the center of the bed. In the past, when I would come home and find her sleeping in my bed, I always took a moment to imagine it was real. That she was mine. When she would awaken, finding me staring at her, I would wipe the expression of longing from my face and make some quip about not knowing whether I should climb in with her or throw her out the window. I knew both ideas would scare he, if only momentarily, but it would keep her from wondering at the initial expression she may have seen on my face.

I quietly stepped into the bathroom and showered, brushed my teeth and shaved. I wanted to make love to her more than I wanted to take my next breath, but if she didn't wake when I climbed into the bed, I would be more than satisfied just holding her.

I shut off the bathroom light, unknotted the towel I had slung across my hips and tossed it into the hamper in the dressing room. I softly padded to the bed, lifted the covers and slid in behind her. Christ, she was so warm and she smelled amazing. She smelled like home. I leaned up on one elbow, lifted her hair away from her neck and nuzzled her.

She scooted her bottom into my groin. In a sleepy voice she said, "Carlos."

I placed a tender kiss behind her ear and murmured, "Missed you, Babe."

She snuggled back into me, half asleep. I found my hand slipping under her tank, tracing my fingers across the impossibly soft skin of her stomach. She made a soft purring noise in the back of her throat. I kissed and licked at her shoulder and feathered my fingers lower and lower, finally slipping them just under the elastic of the panties she wore, teasing her.

She stiffened.

"Babe?"

She turned abruptly to her back, dislodging my hand and I knew she was completely awake.

Without any inflection, she said, "You're home."

I had been gone over three months, missing her, worrying about her, loving her and she sounded almost resigned to have woken up and found me in our bed.

I unclenched my jaw and rubbed her hip. "I'm home, Babe."

She heaved out a big sigh and said, "I missed you."

I leaned over her and rubbed my lips across her lips. Her hands reached up and she threaded her fingers through my damp hair. She pulled me in and kissed me deeply.

I let go of some of the tension I had been feeling just a moment before and I moaned into her mouth as my fingers toyed with the string at the hip of her panties. I hooked my index finger into the front of the silky material and dragged my knuckles low across her abdomen, just above her curls. And she stiffened again.

I halted the movement of my hand and broke the kiss. "What's wrong?"

She turned her head to the side as she said, "We can't. It's not a good time."

I felt myself smile. "Babe, I don't care about that. I haven't made love to you in over three months-"

"No."

"Steph, if you're worried about a little blood on the sheets-"

"Please get off of me."

At first I was stunned. Then I was ashamed. I woke her up in the middle of the night knowing how much she values her sleep. She's probably cramping and all I can think about is how much I want to be inside of her. To feel her wet heat surrounding me, to hear those sounds she makes when I touch her, to hear her say my name as I make her come.

She had rolled back to her side, facing away, and said, "It's not what you're thinking."

Dropping my head on my pillow, I picked up a ringlet of her hair and wound and unwound it on my finger, waiting.

"I was pregnant. I lost the baby six days ago."

My finger froze at its task and her curl dropped back to her pillow. "What?"

"Please don't make me say it again."

Reaching back, I switched on the bedside lamp. I did quick calculations in my head. I had left thirteen weeks ago. She had to have been either at or past the first trimester. I don't have a moral problem with abortion, per se. I might be Catholic, but I live in a world where I see crack and meth addicts having crack babies, and crack babies growing up to make more crack babies and meth addicts. I've seen kids grow up in a less than perfect foster care system and age out, only to kill or be killed before their 19th birthday. I've seen thirteen year-old girls pregnant by their sexually deviant fathers. There are no easy answers. But this was our child. _Our child_. Surely she didn't-

"Babe," I whispered, "You said lost. You _lost_ the baby."

She rolled onto her back and began absently rubbing her tummy. Tears thickened her voice as she said, "I lost our baby. I didn't mean to get pregnant. I'm sorry I got pregnant. I didn't mean-"

I slipped my hand under hers and smoothed my fingers across the skin of her stomach. "Shhh, Babe. I know you didn't mean to. It doesn't matter how it happened." I leaned down and laid a soft kiss just below her navel. I spoke into her downy soft skin, "I'm so sorry I wasn't here. Never apologize for an act of fate."

And she started crying. Really crying. She curled into me and burrowed herself into my body. I ran my hands up and down her back and whispered soothing nonsensical things into her hair. It was clear she was mourning the loss of our child and inexplicably, my heart felt heavy and I realized I was mourning the loss too. To me it was like I had fathered and lost a child all in the space of a few minutes.

Once the storm had passed, I smoothed her hair away from her face and laid a kiss on her forehead. "You wanted the baby."

And the storm started again. I'm an idiot. Of course she wanted the baby. Why the fuck would she cry so hard if she hadn't wanted the baby?

"Babe…Stephanie, listen to me. We can try again."

She stiffened and said, "We didn't try the first time!"

"I know that. But I didn't know what I didn't know."

"What is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"I didn't think I wanted another child. I know you didn't either. But now-"

"I wished it away."

"What?"

"I wished it away. When my period was late I ignored it. Deep down I knew I was pregnant. I didn't want to be pregnant and I knew you didn't want another child. Every little twinge and cramp I had, I prayed I was having a miscarriage. Every time I went to the bathroom, I would look at my panties praying to find blood. And I thought about having an abortion. I even made an appointment. In the end, I just couldn't do it. I started thinking about what our child would look like. Would he be stoic and quiet like you or wild and out of control like me? Would he be dark like you or some color in between us? I started talking to him, in my head. Wondering what he wanted me to eat, or if he slept while I slept. I wondered if he could hear yet and if he could, what he thought of Metallica. I wondered if you would ever grow to love him and-"

"Babe."

"I wished him away."

"No Babe. You didn't. You were scared and confused. You were in a situation where you felt like you had no control. Fight or flight. You were minding your own business and your body was going on without you. You didn't make this happen. It just happened.

"You are no different from me. When I found out Rachel was pregnant…I don't even want to tell you what I thought. I resented her, and I resented Julie before she was even born. I didn't think I could love her; I didn't want to love her. But then I held her in my arms and I just…loved her."

"Can I have a tissue?"

I leaned up on one arm and grabbed several from the box on the nightstand. I held the wad up to her nose and said, "Blow."

She looked at me like I was crazy. "Blow," I repeated.

When she was done, I tossed the Kleenex on the nightstand and leaned back over her on my elbows. I stared at her until she gave up and looked into my eyes. "What I'm about to say in no way diminishes, negates or is intended to suggest anything about the child we have lost." I paused for a moment and prayed she would hear me, believe me. "I want to have a child with you. Only if you want to and only when you're ready."

She was silent for a long moment, and then nodded her head.

"You'll think about it?"

She nodded again.

Leaning back once again, I shut off the lamp. I pulled her body back into mine and let out a soft sigh.

"I'm not renewing my contract with the government in September."

"You don't have to do that for me. Don't change yourself for me. I knew who you were going into this."

I banded my arm more tightly around her waist. "I'm not changing, Babe. I'm making a change. The older I get the less effective I'll be and the risks I'm taking are becoming far too great. I didn't have anything to lose before. I do now. I used to have visions of saving the world, and in the last six months, my definition of 'the world' has scaled down to a five mile radius of wherever you are at any given moment. I don't want to be away from you if I don't have to.

"But it's who you are."

"We're not the same people we were three years ago, even three months ago. We've changed, we've evolved. Those changes are good, Steph. I don't want to be the man I was before you came into my life. I'm not ashamed of the person I was, but I was only half a man. I wasn't really living. You've brought life to me."

Her tiny hand found my larger one where it was splayed across her stomach. She brought it to her face and laid a gentle kiss on my palm. Then she laid my hand across her heart and held it to her as she drifted off to sleep.

~End


End file.
